He explains his past crime and his early parole from prison after being convicted of self-defense manslaughter in a drunken, bar-room brawl:I""ve been in the penitentiary for four years.Later in their darkened upper room in the tentative love scene, they share a few memories of their childhood and he offers her a loving hought before she departs:Judah: If you were not a bride, I should kiss you goodbye.The actress Bette Davis (in her mid-career at the age of 40) was miscast in the film as the young, beautiful and dissatisfied sexpot, playing one of the baddest, no-good, trashiest, and most warped of allfemme fatalesas she schemed and murdered to escape her oppressive small-town roots and get out of her stultifying marriage.[Note: Fay Wray mistakenly believed that her RKO film co-star, ""the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood,"" would be Cary Grant rather than the beast.